The Maw of SkullGreymon (Unreviewed)[]
Back when I was a kid I loved Digimon and would watch the episodes of Digimon Adventure and Adventure 2 over and over again. As I got older I managed to get DVDs of the other seasons as well but even today I hold Adventure and Adventure 2 in higher regard. Even though I loved the death out of Adventure there’s one episode that I always skipped when I was a kid: Episode 16. “The Arrival of SkullGreymon” was that episode. The first time I watched this episode I was able to make it to the point where Greymon digivolves into SkullGreymon but the sight of him made me cry.
I have never fully watched that episode except for the one time I tried as an adult. If I recall correctly I was 23 and going through a box of old DVDs and CDs when I found the entirety of Adventure and Adventure 2 still in their boxes. I thought it’d be fun to go onto a nostalgia trip so I dusted off my old DVD player and decided to watch all of the episodes again. I soon reached episode 16. As soon as the episode started I remembered which episode it was and felt a wave of sadness and fear wash over me.
I quickly brushed this off as it’s just a kids’ show and I have no reason to be afraid of it anymore. I was half paying attention until the moment where Greymon digivolves. I watched the whole scene and it was exactly how I remembered but obviously not as scary. The young imagination can get out of hand when it comes to fear. Suddenly my TV screen froze on the reveal of SkullGreymon’s face.
I attributed this to the DVD being old or possibly dirty since I didn’t bother checking its back. I got up from my couch to eject it from the DVD player but as soon as I got close to the TV I hear a loud cracking sound. Needless to say, it scared the shit out of me. I continued to bend down towards the DVD play but I noticed that the image on the TV screen changed. My TV now displayed SkullGreymon’s skull staring straight on a pure black background.
Oddly enough SkullGreymon was missing his signature green eyes leaving holes in their place. I stepped back to get a better look and white Japanese text popped up on the screen. I can’t speak Japanese so I opened a Japanese to English translation app on my phone and scanned the text using the phone’s camera. The translator read “I hunger.” There’s no telling how accurate this translator actually is but I trusted what it told me.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing or reading. “Did someone edit the disc in some way? Is this a pirated DVD and this is an anti-piracy measure?” are some of the things I thought. I couldn’t even know if this had been here all along since I always skipped this episode. There had to be something wrong with my copy as every internet search I made regarding this screen came up short. I sat down on my couch and stared at SkullGreymon’s lifeless eyes on the screen.
A few seconds later the text changed and I translated it: “I will kill them all.” My confusion quickly turned into fear as the speakers from the TV emitted a loud and crackly “Koromon!” seemingly from Tai. My breathing gets heavy as I stare more intensely at the screen. The text changed once more: “I will not be controlled…their time has come.” I remember this next part vividly as the moonlight shone through my living room windows.
The screen switched to pure black and it stayed that way for around a minute before I heard the first of many blood-curdling screams. They were loud and played only a few seconds apart from one another. They sounded like they were from the main characters, both the DigiDestined and their Digimon. SkullGreymon’s skull appeared back on the pitch-black background but now his entire lower and upper jaw were stained with blood as well as blood being splattered and dotted across his entire head. A sort of dark and creepy breathing was now constantly coming from the TV.
Japanese text appeared on the screen for the final time: “I am full with the bodies of my friends. They fuel my desire for chaos and pain. Now be like them and enter the maw of SkullGreymon.” After I read that the SkullGreymon skull opens its mouth wide and I see the mutilated bodies of the Digidestined and their Digimon. Suddenly Tai’s head appears on screen. His head is only a skull with his goggles and hair as well as having glowing green eyes in his eye sockets. Tai lets out an agonizing scream then the TV abruptly cuts to the start of episode 17 as if nothing happened.
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Te (talk) 12:56, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[]
Howdy there!
I will begin by saying that this story isn't appropriate for this wiki. If you attempt to post it here, it will be removed. The reason being, the blacklisted subjects / spinoff rules. You can't base your story off of someone else's existing IP (in this case (Digimon).
That said, I'll still give a bit of input.
One thing to point out would be appropriate comma use. Some of your sentences are long, and have seperate clauses. You could possibly break them up into smaller sentences, but that may cause a disruption of the flow. That's where commas can come in handy.
The formatting is kind of off. There's no reason for the paragraphs to have such massive spaces between them. Double space should suffice. Sometimes formatting gets really wonky when you paste your story into the wiki editor, so keep that in mind. I often find myself needing to correct spacing and paragraphs when I first post a story.
There's a few words that aren't appropriately used. "...DVD play..." should be DVD player, for example. Small things like this will easily be fixed by proofreading.
There's a few minor issues with sentence structure, and tense, but those can easily be remidied with a bit of proofreading too.
Now, on to the plot.
I was a big Digimon fan growing up, but I can't say that I found myself particularly engrossed/scared by the "spooky" events of the story. It felt a bit too heavy on the blood and gore aspect, and a bit light on the actualy why of being scared.
The cracking sound when the narrator goes to turn off the DVD player should (in my opinion) be expanded on. I like the real life reach of it, even if it seems almost entirely irrelevant (the story could easily exist without that part happening, it didn't really change much).
Typically these types of Lost Episode or haunted video stories end with some reason why the narrator can not share their experience, except by telling the story. For example "After the scene, my DVD player began to smoke, then caught fire. The disc was destroyed." or "The next time I tried to watch it, the scene was missing." While I find it more on the refreshing side that you didn't rely on that typical whoops, can't prove it now! trope, it does definitely leave a pretty big loose end.
Try to really imagine what is scary to you, and illustrate that. It never hurts to try to play on the reader's imagination too.
Anyhow, despite not being able to post your story to this wiki, if you fix it up, you could definitely post this somewhere else, and do well!